Rumors

Rumor Roundup: Canucks, Oilers set to have busy off-seasons in search of winger, blueliner

The Vancouver Canucks are looking for someone to play alongside the Sedins next season, and there are plenty of options available via free agency. Meanwhile, the Edmonton Oilers need to search high and low for defense help, especially after Islanders defenseman Travis Hamonic nixed his request to be traded out of New York.

It's been nearly a month since the Vancouver Canucks' season came to an end. That hasn't stopped the local media from speculating about the club's off-season roster plans.

The Vancouver Sun's Ben Kuzma lists five things he believes the Canucks should and shouldn't do this summer. Among those they should do is look into the trade status of Tampa Bay Lightning left winger Jonathan Drouin, though Kuzma expects the asking price could be the Canucks first-round pick (fifth overall) in this year's draft plus a roster player.

He also recommends pursuing Boston Bruins right winger Loui Eriksson or the New York Islanders' Kyle Okposo via free agency to skate on the Sedin line. That would buy time for younger players, such as Jake Virtanen, to develop.

GM Jim Benning claims his goalie tandem will remain intact for next season. However, Kuzma believes he should look into any trade interest in veteran Ryan Miller to clear his $6-million cap hit for next season from their books. He also suggests targeting teams with limited cap space to bring in a No. 4 defenseman and letting pending UFA blueliner Dan Hamhuis walk if his asking price is too high.

Whoever they pursue via trades and free agency will remain a popular guessing game among Vancouver fans and pundits as the end of the playoffs approaches. It's assumed Benning, a former assistant GM with the Bruins, will go after Eriksson when the free-agent market opens on July 1. Okposo would also be a prime candidate.

Lucic and the Kings are reportedly getting closer to a new contract, so it's doubtful he'll be joining his hometown club. Stamkos could cost out $10 million per season, which should price him out of the Canucks' price range.

Ladd would be a decent option at left wing, but he'd have to play second fiddle to Daniel Sedin and that probably won't be enticing. The declining Staal would be a gamble, though if they sign him to a one-year deal for around $4 million, perhaps an affordable one.

FIRST-OVERALL PICK STAYING IN TORONTO

Since the Toronto Maple Leafs won the 2016 NHL draft lottery, there's been ongoing media chatter suggesting they might move that pick for the right return. The Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons, however, rejects that notion. He claims the word around the Leafs is they're keeping that pick and selecting top prospect Auston Matthews in the draft.

Of course, that won't stop some pundits from playing “what if” during a slow news day. Much of the conjecture has the Arizona Coyotes making a big pitch to the Leafs for that pick in order to select local boy Matthews themselves. Some of it had defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson as the centerpiece of the offer, though that's been dismissed by team CEO and president Anthony LeBlanc.

The Coyotes, and maybe other clubs, have probably contacted the Leafs to gauge their interest in moving that pick. It would take a monstrous deal to pry that pick away from the Leafs, one that will quickly douse interest from rival clubs.

That puts an end to months of media-generated trade scenarios involving Hamonic. Most had him heading to the Edmonton Oilers for right winger Jordan Eberle or to the Winnipeg Jets for defenseman Jacob Trouba.

With Hamonic off the trade block, the Oilers must look elsewhere for a top-two defenseman with a right-handed shot. The Edmonton Journal's David Staples suggests the Anaheim Ducks' Sami Vatanen, the Colorado Avalanche's Tyson Barrie or Dallas Stars pending UFA Jason Demers as options. Of these, the Oilers stand a better chance of landing Vatanen or Demers. The Avs are expected to re-sign Barrie, a restricted free agent, to a multiyear deal.

Rumor Roundup appears regularly only on thehockeynews.com. Lyle Richardson has been an NHL commentator since 1998 on his website, spectorshockey.net, and is a contributing writer for Eishockey News and The Guardian (P.E.I.).

Play-in wildcard game? It's the National Hockey League not National House League

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Play-in wildcard game? It's the National Hockey League not National House League

Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland has thrown his support behind a play-in wildcard game for the playoffs. Holland has never had a bad idea...until now.

It’s not often, if ever, that your trusty correspondent disagrees with one of the brightest, most progressive voices in hockey. But when it comes to the notion of holding a wildcard play-in game to give one more team per conference a chance to make the playoffs, that’s where I have to draw the line with one Ken Holland.

Speaking to Gary Lawless of tsn.ca, the Detroit Red Wings GM and the man who brought us 3-on-3 overtime opined that he would like to see the playoff pool expanded to essentially have three wildcard teams instead of two. The wildcard team with the best regular-season record of the three would be guaranteed a playoff berth, while the next two would hold a one-game, winner-take-all event to decide the second wildcard team.

There hasn’t been much of an appetite for this sort of thing among the game's power brokers, thank goodness, but there wasn’t much of an appetite for 3-on-3 overtime at one time, either. Holland can be very persuasive. Not sure if he hypnotizes his fellow GMs by swinging one of his four Stanley Cup rings on a string in front of their eyes, but he has a way of getting them to come around his way of thinking. Here’s hoping they resist the temptation this time.

Here’s why. Because any excitement the wildcard race would create in the markets that are involved would be mitigated by the notion that the league is once again rewarding mediocrity. These teams have 82 games to prove they’re in the top half of the league. That doesn’t seem, at least to these eyes, to be too much to ask. A better idea would be to just give each of the No. 9 seeds a nice, shiny Participation Trophy and send them home for the summer.

Geez, Louise, don’t we have enough parity shoved down our throats by the NHL already? Let’s see, when a team is killing a penalty it is allowed, for reasons nobody seems to be able to explain, to ice the puck with impunity. And if it gets scored on, the penalized player is allowed back on the ice. Players can glove the puck ahead in the defensive zone, but not the offensive zone. The NHL has a draft to ensure that all the best players are distributed fairly. The NHL has a salary cap to prevent rich, large market teams from having a competitive advantage. Teams that lose in overtime or the skills competition get a single loser point for just showing up, which already creates trumped-up playoff races and bogus .500 teams. Someday when the league and the players can agree on it, they'll get around to streamlining goaltending equipment. The NHL awarded a trophy to the best defensive forward for more than 20 years before it decided to get around to establishing one for the league’s top goal scorer. Rather than reward excellence, the NHL has time after time tailored its rules and philosophy to bringing great teams down to the others’ level.

And this would just be another example of that. Last season, the Minnesota Wild limped into eighth in the Western Conference and lost their last five games of the season. The Colorado Avalanche finished five points behind the Wild, losing each of their last six games of the season. Wow, that would have been some game, eh? The only problem is that the way those teams were playing down the stretch, the league might have had to postpone the start of the playoffs to let them finish the game. When you take into account the 11 bogus points the Wild gained for losing in overtime and shootouts, they lost six more games than they won last season. And they still made the playoffs. That’s quite enough, thank you.

Had there been a play-in game in 2011-12, the Los Angeles Kings would have had to play the Calgary Flames in Game No. 83 of the season. If the Flames had won, the Kings would not have gone on to win their first Stanley Cup. If there had been one in 2014-15, the Winnipeg Jets would have faced the Kings and had they lost, we would have been deprived of their first-round series against the Anaheim Ducks, one that went four straight, but might have been the closest, most intense and competitive sweeps in the history of the game.

Look, most teams are already in the playoff race until the last quarter of the season. Unless they’re really bad, like say, Colorado is this season. The league constantly trumpets how close its games are, conveniently failing to point out the fact that it’s only that way because nobody scores goals anymore. The NHL loves its parity, but enough is enough. It reminds me of house league hockey where scorekeepers stop adding goals to the winning team if the margin between the teams is more than five goals, as if the kids are too dumb to figure out that they’re actually losing 14-0 if the scoreboard only says 5-0. It’s all a part of the everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality that many observers think is adding to a sense of entitlement in kids that they are now taking into adulthood.

I’m not about to wade into that debate at the moment, but one thing I do know is that there’s no place for it in the best league in the world where the players are also smart enough to know when they don’t belong in the playoffs. And it’s the NHL, which stands for National Hockey League, not National House League.

Jets’ Scheifele set to return after missing three straight with hamstring issue

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Jets’ Scheifele set to return after missing three straight with hamstring issue

The Winnipeg Jets aren’t completely healthy yet, but a major piece is back in the lineup Thursday as Mark Scheifele returns from injury. Scheifele, the Jets leading scorer, has missed the past three games due to a hamstring issue.

The Winnipeg Jets have been on a roll of late and their chances of pushing themselves out of a wild card spot and into a divisional slot are going to get a big help Thursday night with the return of Mark Scheifele to the lineup.

Scheifele, 23, has missed the past three games with a lower-body injury, and Scheifele said Thursday that the issue had to do with his hamstring, according to the Winnipeg Sun’s Ken Wiebe. The worst part about the injury, Scheifele said, was that he kept thinking he was going to be able to suit up only to be forced out of the lineup.

“It was an up in the air thing, and every morning you’re anxious to see how you’re going to feel. It was definitely tough mentally,” Scheifele said. “Today when I woke up and got on the ice I felt fine, continued to skate and it got better and better. I’m definitely very happy.”

The Jets get Scheifele back just as they’re about to enter a home tilt against the New York Rangers. If Winnipeg can pick up two points, they’ll move from the second wild card spot in the Western Conference into third place in the Central Division, leapfrogging the inactive Wild. That said, the Wild will have five games in hand on the Jets.

While much of the talk this season has (rightfully) been about the play of rookie Patrik Laine, Scheifele is putting together the best season of his young career and continuing the hot run of play that he had to closed out the past campaign. Through the first 26 games of the campaign, Scheifele had posted 13 goals and 13 assists, paced the Jets with 26 points and his point per game pace is far and away the best of his career. If he continues scoring at this rate, he could end the year with a 40-goal, 80-point campaign.

The timing for the career year is perfect for Scheifele, too. Winnipeg can be a tough market, but since signing his sizeable eight-year, $49-million extension in the off-season, everything — sans the injury, of course — has been coming up Scheifele.

With his return to the lineup, one of the coach Paul Maurice’s recent experiments will come to an end as winger Blake Wheeler will move out of the middle and back to his normal spot on the top line. Maurice had been running the Jets captain as a center in Scheifele’s absence, but he’ll now be skating alongside Scheifele in his usual spot.

The healthy return of Scheifele also marks a sign of some players coming off the injured list for the Jets, too. There’s still a way to go before the team is completely healthy, though. Tyler Myers, Shawn Matthias, Joel Armia and Nic Petan all remain on the injured reserve.

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The Golden Knights have hit another hurdle with their name, this time with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A trademark request has been rejected, but it doesn’t sound like the team expects a name change.

The Vegas Golden Knights are really having a tough time catching a break in the naming department.

On Wednesday, a trademark request by the Golden Knights was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in large part because the name and logo were deemed too similar to that of the NCAA’s College of St. Rose Golden Knights.

Yes, that’s right, yet another roadblock between the NHL’s newest franchise and the name Golden Knights.

The first hurdle for the team, and the first real hubbub about the name, came shortly after the naming ceremony in late November. The team had only had the Golden Knights moniker in place for a week when it was reported by The Fayetteville Observer’s Steve DeVane that the U.S. Army was set to review Vegas’ use of the name because it is shared by the Army’s highly decorated parachute team.

And all that came after Vegas owner Bill Foley purposely strayed from his first choice for the team name, Black Knights, in order to avoid any conflict with the U.S. Army’s NCAA athletics programs and after the singular name, Knights, was reportedly avoided in order to forego any conflict with the OHL’s London Knights.

Suffice to say, the naming process has been a headache thus far. However, before those who despise the name and/or logo go celebrating in the streets, it should be noted that the latest naming hurdle likely means nothing in the long run.

“Office actions like this are not at all unusual, and we will proceed with the help of outside counsel in preparing a response to this one,” the statement reads.

In their statement, Vegas also pointed to the shared names of UCLA and Boston, both named the Bruins, Miami and Carolina, both named the Hurricanes, and even pointed out that Vegas and Clarkson share the Golden Knights name. None of this is to mention the MLB’s Texas Rangers and the NHL’s New York Rangers share a name.

“We believe, at the end of the day, all parties will embrace the fact that we are the Vegas Golden Knights and this absolutely will work out,” Craven told Gotz. “I hope people don’t overreact to this at all. We believe everyone will be satisfied. We are only going to enhance the name Golden Knights for everyone. That’s our goal.”

UPDATE: NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly has released the following statement:

“We are currently reviewing the Trademark Office's letter and will prepare a detailed response demonstrating why we continue strongly to believe the Vegas Golden Knights mark should be registered in co-existence with the college registration, just as a number of other nicknames currently co-exist in professional and college sports (particularly where there is no overlap as to the sport for which the nickname is being used). That response is not due until June 7, 2017.

“We consider this a routine matter and it is not our intention to reconsider the name or logo of this franchise. We fully intend to proceed as originally planned, relying on our common law trademark rights as well as our state trademark registrations while we work through the process of addressing the question raised in the federal applications.”

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ECHL defenseman Anthony Calabrese is “lucky to be alive” after a “careless, reckless” hit, and Tyler Murovich, who delivered the blow, has been given a 12-game suspension as a first-time offender.

There are few plays scarier than seeing a player hit from behind and sent headfirst into the boards. That kind of play is made that much harder to watch when knowing the severity of the injury suffered.

During an ECHL contest on Nov. 24 between the Norfolk Admirals and Atlanta Gladiators, ECHL veteran Tyler Murovich delivered an incredibly dangerous shove to the back of Anthony Calabrese, a 24-year-old defenseman who’s only 12 games into his ECHL career.

The result of the hit was frightening. Calabrese was left laying face down on the ice, near motionless. The Admirals rearguard would eventually be placed on a stretcher, taken from the ice and transported to hospital.

That may seem harsh to some given that Murovich is a first-time offender, but given the severity of Calabrese’s injury, it actually seems like a somewhat light punishment.

As a result of the hit, Calabrese suffered broken C7 and T1 vertebrae. In simpler terms, he broke both his neck and his back. Oh, and he also punctured his lung. In fact, Calabrese told The Virginian-Pilot’s Jim Hodges that doctors told the young center that he’s “lucky to be alive.”

“It was a miracle, and they say I’m going to make a full recovery,” Calabrese told Hodges. “It’s going to be a long road, but I’d rather be alive than be in a wheelchair the rest of my life.”

What helped Calabrese escape with his life, he told Hodges, was advice he had gotten early in his career from a high school coach. Calabrese was taught that if he was ever going into the boards head first to lift his chin and turn to the side in an attempt to avoid taking the brunt of the impact with the top of his head.

“That’s honestly the only thing that registered in my mind when I was going in: at the last minute, pick my head up,” Calabrese told Hodges. “I remember picking my head up and turning it to the right.”

Thankfully, doctors told Calabrese that he can eventually return to the ice and that the injuries suffered from the hit won’t cost him his career. His spinal cord, he told Hodges, wasn’t damaged due to the hit. And, as hard as it may be to believe, doctors said it was the “best possible break” in a situation such as Calabrese’s.